


Childish

by JRaylin441



Series: Briareus [6]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, angst(ish) then fluff(ish)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 03:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7084513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JRaylin441/pseuds/JRaylin441
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into the Elric's Christmas from an outside point of view.</p>
<p>
  <i>It was the boy who was causing the true sympathy to well up in Falman. At twelve, he should still be caught up in the magic of the holiday, spending the morning unwrapping gifts and the night with a loving family, basking in the glow of companionship. Instead, the kid was out running errands for the military all day, distracted to the point that he hadn’t even noticed the date.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Childish

**Author's Note:**

> So I originally wrote this one on Christmas, which is why it's super seasonally inappropriate at this point. I hope you like it anyway!

Falman leaned against his desk, shoved off in the corner though it was, and slowly nursed his third drink of the night. Just enough to get him to fully relax, but not enough that he would have much to worry about in the morning. The cheery music in the air was infectious, and had caused a rare grin to stretch across his face. He wasn’t drunk enough to actually join in on the partying yet, but he was happy to sit and watch as everyone else let go of their inhibitions for a few hours.

Some of his coworkers had shown a little less restraint when it came to their alcohol intake. Mustang was currently standing in the middle of the room, regaling a rapt Havoc with tales of everything that would change once he became fuhrer. Hawkeye was watching with a smile of disapproval and exasperated fondness. She was clearly not drunk, but her normally pinned-back hair was hanging loose and long, which for her was almost the equivalent. Breda and Fuery were chatting casually while Breda slowly coerced the slightly-inebriated shorter man into a game of poker.

The décor of the room was actually rather dreary. Someone, probably Hughes (before he had left to be home with his wife and daughter), had strung up red and green tinsel along with a sign that said _Merry Christmas_ across the front. By now, one of the nails holding the sign up had relinquished its grip, and half the words lay tattered on the ground, stained with mud from uncaring boots. There was a bowl of punch (which was, by this point, more than half vodka) sitting on what was normally Havoc’s desk.

Somehow, it was the happiness of the people within the room that kept the party from falling apart. An hour in, Havoc and the Colonel had both donned fake reindeer antlers, determined to ‘do this properly’. No one had been surprised. By this point, it was well-known just how much their commanding officer enjoyed the holiday. Falman suspected it had something to do with the lack of paperwork. Aside from that, it was just nice to have a time where the officers could stop acting like soldiers and actually enjoy each other’s company. There was a simple joy in the feeling of staying after-hours in a place of work and pretending it was meant for some other purpose.

The door to the office slammed open, kicked in by a black-booted foot, but the sound was completely covered by the music and volume of the Colonel’s rants. The world’s youngest state alchemist stood in the frame, struck silent for a moment as he tried to make sense of the sight before him. The large suit of armor that was his younger brother shifted from foot to foot just behind him.

Looking for all the world as if he were preparing for an ambush, Major Elric began to shuffle into the room, latching his eyes on the figure of Mustang, slouched on the floor in the center of the room. The man looked up as his subordinate approached him, and the boy raised his metal hand, clenched around a stack of papers. Falman noted that the left hand was tied in a sling around the boy’s neck.

“I’m here to turn in my report…” His voice, normally sure and strong with the brashness of youth, was now a bit unsure. “We just got back in a half hour ago.”

Of course, Falman reasoned, it must be fairly odd to see the Colonel as he was now, spots of color high on his cheeks, jacket loose and unbuttoned, reindeer horns sticking straight up. Everyone else at the party had seen the gradual descent to this state, but the boy was getting the full effect.

“Fullmetal!” Oh yeah, and Mustang was known to completely lose control of his volume when drunk. “Why not join us? Get a drink.” He gave a vague wave in the direction of Havoc’s desk.

“What the hell? I’m underage, Bastard.” The Colonel’s comment had probably been meant to set the boy at ease, but it seemed to have done the opposite. “What the hell is going on right now anyway? Aren’t you all supposed to be at home?”

Just then, his brother nudged him with a metal elbow. “Brother, I think today’s Christmas.”

For a moment, it looked like Ed didn’t understand what had just been said, but his eyes looked where the suit of armor was pointing, to see the dilapidated sign on the floor.

“Huh. Would you look at that.” And confident Ed was back, the tension washed away by comprehension. “Well, that explains why you look even more like an idiot than normal. Why are you having a party _here_?”

Mustang began to pompously declare that they had been planning on going to a bar, but it would be expensive to rent out when they had free space, and someone needed to be around to collect the Fullmetal Alchemist’s report when he returned. There hadn’t been much deliberation. The office could be fun enough, when enough alcohol was made available.

Falman, however, was less focused on the conversation and more on the young twelve year old soldier standing in the middle of an adults’ Christmas party. The cheery coating on the night slipped for a second, and the grey-haired man saw the room for was it truly was: a sad spectacle. No one here had anywhere else to be or anyone else to be with. This office was their life. No wonder they had all been happy to stay in.

But at least for adults, this was something acceptable.

It was the boy who was causing the true sympathy to well up in Falman. At twelve, he should still be caught up in the magic of the holiday, spending the morning unwrapping gifts and the night with a loving family, basking in the glow of companionship. Instead, the kid was out running errands for the military all day, distracted to the point that he hadn’t even noticed the date. Nor did it seem like he was about to ask for some holiday time off. In fact, if Falman could hear correctly, it sounded like Ed was trying to get the Colonel to focus long enough to give him another assignment. Sure, everyone knew that the kid had motivation like no one else, but this had to be a bit extreme?

Apparently, the Colonel was not cooperating with the boy, and a few minutes passed as Edward cursed at the man until he was blue in the face, and the recipient of said curses tried to get the Fullmetal Alchemist drunk, until the boy seemed to decide that it was not worth the effort.

“Fine, Colonel Bastard. I’m going. But I’ll see you tomorrow for an assignment, bright and early, and you better believe that I will bring some nice, loud pots and pans with me.” The kid stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him and leaving a moment of silence in his wake.

“The miniskirts will, of course, have to hit at least mid-thigh…” Mustang resumed his pontificating, drawing Havoc back in and returning the room to the state it had been in before. Falman, however, felt the lingering sadness that had come from his earlier observation and, on a split-second decision, found himself slipping out the door after Ed. His loud voice made him an easy target to follow, and Falman stayed a few turns behind him as they made their way toward the front door.

“I should have gotten you a present or something. What kinda shit big brother doesn’t get their little brother a present for Christmas?” The words not meant to be overheard carried back down the hallway, and Falman couldn’t keep his trained ears from listening in.

“It’s okay, Brother. I didn’t get you anything either.”

“Yeah, but I bet you were _going_ to. I bet you just didn’t do it because you knew that I would forget and you didn’t want to make me feel bad.”

“That’s not true!”

They were nearing the door now. “Yeah it is. Here. I know what I’ll do.” There was the quiet sound of a clap, and then the unmistakable flash of light that always accompanied a transmutation. Apparently, the boy was using his gifts for more than the military’s dirty work.

“Thank you, Brother!” Whatever had been done seemed to make Al very happy, and there was a content silence that followed the boys out the door and into the main courtyard. Falman increased his pace so that he could see which way they went once outside, but stopped as soon as he opened the outer doors.

Somehow, the boys had gotten the central water pump, which had been frozen solid for the past few weeks, to start working again and were now using it to flood water over the whole surface of the courtyard. When they had successfully gotten it everywhere, Edward went to stand in the middle of it all and clapped his hands together. When he slammed them to the ground, the blue light showed the emergence of a lovely winterscape, as the water froze into mounds of snow.

“Come on, Brother!” Al had already climbed to the top of one of the mounds, and Ed let out as whoop as he ran to meet him. Once there, the boy leapt onto the back of his younger brother, and used the suit of armor like a sled. They tumbled apart at the bottom of the hill and rolled to independent stops, the older boy gasping for breath and laughing past cheeks pinked with cold. Already, the snow was caking into his hair.

A snowball flew out of nowhere and hit the Fullmetal Alchemist in the chest, calling on his pride to retaliate. The boy responded with great enthusiasm, and soon the courtyard was filled with boyish laughter as a suit of armor and his older brother pelted each other tirelessly with frozen projectiles and occasionally descended into short sparring matches. The light from the nearby streetlamp caught on an uneven spot of Al’s armor, and as Falman looked closer, he saw that there was now a small kitten etched into the rerebrace. One that hadn’t been there when the boys had stopped in to return the report.

And Falman felt the sadness that had built up in his chest begin to ease a little.

When the boys had been going at it for fifteen minutes, showing no signs of slowing down, the grey-haired interloper excused himself and slipped back inside. He made his quiet way down the hall and returned to the party with almost no one the wiser. Mustang and Havoc had started to work together on brainstorming new ideas, and Breda had managed to convince Fuery to play poker with him (he appeared to be winning handily).

Hawkeye was standing over near the window and caught Falman’s glance from across the room, motioning him over with a jerk of her head. When he reached her side, no words were exchanged, just a soft smile to show that she had seen what he had done. Falman returned it and stayed next to her, as he didn’t yet feel like returning to his desk. As he glanced around the room and out the window, he saw that the view looked down onto the courtyard. It looked like the snowball fight had ended, and Al had convinced his brother to make snow angels with him.

In that moment, surrounded by his friends and the cheery golden glow that they cast, looking down on the last innocence of a boy who was twelve-going-on-fifty, Falman realized the he was perfectly content.


End file.
